We slowly connect with this mystery through living from the clarity of our deepest intention.

For Eliot, intention is the key to well-being because it is the “ground” from which all wanting arises. As you gain more clarity about how things truly are, your intentions naturally become less distorted by greed and aversion, and your sense of well-being grows proportionally. Eliot’s answer is strikingly similar to what the Buddha taught. I have

His answer is that well-being comes from continually clarifying and purifying your intention, which he calls “the motive.”

Finally, in “Little Gidding,” the last of the poems, Eliot eloquently addresses the question of how we come to terms with life just as it is. He does so by borrowing a quote from Dame Julian of Norwich, a fourteenth-century Christian mystic: “All shall be well and all manner of thing shall be well,” to which he adds this directive: By the

In the third poem, “East Coker,” Eliot states that you can’t rely on perceptions that do not come from actual experience; therefore you must give up your fixed views and “go by a way which is the way of ignorance.” These reflections and the many other insights Eliot offers create the framework in which he then presents his understanding of how to

In the second poem, “The Dry Salvages,” Eliot explains that only in those moments when you are fully present can you make a difference in the life of another or in your own: “on whatever…the mind of a man may be intent…that is the one action…which shall fructify in the lives of others.”

In the first of the book’s four poems, “Burnt Norton,” Eliot says that your inner stillness is the center of the universe: “At the still point of the turning world… there the dance is.” When you can connect with that stillness, you gain a sense of clarity and joy that is beyond the happiness that can be found in the struggle to achieve gain and

All aspects of your life will then become opportunities for you to seek clarity about what genuinely matters and to speak and act accordingly.

Forgiveness Practice For any harm I may have caused others knowingly or unknowingly through my thoughts, words, or actions, I ask their forgiveness. For any harm others may have caused me knowingly or unknowingly through their thoughts, words, and actions, I forgive them as best I am able. For any harm I may have caused myself knowingly or